1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an imaging apparatus, a method of processing information, and a storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
Today, media transmission using an IP network, such as the Internet, is widely used. Further, RTP, which is a protocol for transmitting media data, such as data of moving images taken by a camera or the like, and audio data, in real time via a network, has come to be used. Here, IP is an abbreviation for “Internet Protocol”, and RTP is an abbreviation for “Real-time Transport Protocol”.
Further, as one manner of use of media data transmission, a transmission apparatus equipped with a server function for transmitting media data, as typified by a live camera or a monitoring camera, is requested to transmit media data, by a plurality of reception apparatuses. Furthermore, there is also a manner of use of media data transmission, in which, to obtain videos from different angles or to provide a substitute in case of failure, a plurality of data transmission apparatuses shoot videos of the same object to be shot, and transmit the shot video data to a data reception apparatus.
In the real-time transmission of media data, to maintain the quality of media data during playback by the data reception apparatuses, it is required to perform control, such as limiting of the number of connections of data reception apparatuses, by taking into account processing load on the data transmission apparatus and load on the network. Conventionally, as a method of limiting the number of connections of data reception apparatuses, a technique has been disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication NO. H10-164559 in which the maximum number of connections is set in advance as a threshold value, and connection requests exceeding the threshold value are rejected.
Further, there has been disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication NO. 2009-071538 a technique which causes each data reception apparatus itself to have a data transfer function and transfer data in consideration of the tree structure of the network, thereby making it possible to transmit media data to a large number of data reception apparatuses while reducing the processing load and the load on the network.
However, in the conventional method of limiting the number of connections of data reception apparatuses, even if a plurality of data transmission apparatuses are provided, when a data transmission apparatus having received a connection request has already been connected to the upper limit number of data reception apparatuses, the data transmission apparatus rejects the requested connection, even if another data transmission apparatus can transmit media data. Therefore, to make the most of the resources of the data transmission apparatuses, a data reception apparatus is required to grasp in advance the presence of the plurality of data transmission apparatuses, and when a connection request is rejected, the data reception apparatus is required to retransmit the connection request to other data transmission apparatuses.
Further, the technique for transferring media data between data reception apparatuses suffers from the problem that a data reception apparatus is required not only to grasp the network structure of the other data reception apparatuses but also to be equipped with a data transfer function.